Excellent picture. Just love it. Hope to see more when you got back with your A700. By the way, any advice which program to use to do these photos? I don't have the Elements, but LightRoom I got + MS's Digital Image Suite + CS3 (not installed at this moment and never used it before). But I wonder, that is there any software which can do the stitching and user just shows where's the horizon should be etc.

I think most editing programs have a stitch feature. In elements I just selected the four and it just did it for me. All I had to do is crop all the garbage off after it was done. The three biggest things: Don't use a polariser, lock your exposure for all the shots you intend to use, and keep your horizons straight (on my first try, one of my horizons was crooked and it made that section merge all weird, so I just straightened it and tried again and voila!) Poke around with whatever program you use. I'll bet you can do it too!

Nice image and panoramic of the Salt Lake Valley. Is this the road that leads up to the ski area? Last summer on the way up to Yellowstone we stopped in Salt Lake City and ended up taking a road up to the ski area that had similar views and hiked up in the ski area to do a little photography. It was a beautiful and very photogenic area.

In all likeyhood you were up either Big or Little Cottonwood canyons. They both lead up to some ski areas. This canyon, Citycreek. is the northernmost of the 6 canyons here in the valley, and it begins in proximity to the State Capitol. There is a paved road, but it is closed to most vehicles unless you have a permit for one of the day use areas. The road goes 7 or 8 miles and dead ends. There are a few trails up there. This particular canyon is mostly about hiking, biking, picnicing and walking. There is a small water treatment facility about half way up.

Quite well done especially for a first attempt!

Seems a bit color dense, do you prefer more saturation in your shots?

Not a nitpick just curious.

Carl

Thanx Carl. Yes, I lean towards a more saturated look. I cut my teeth on Fuji films so I've grown accustomed to the look. This post in particular looks that way for a few reasons: I tend to increase saturation a bit in PP, the scene was really quite intense with color naturally, and lastly, when I PP'ed this picture, I was prepping it to print 30" x 7' on our Roland printer at work to see how it would look big, as I might frame it for over the couch, and because of the media I plan on using, it really needs to have alot of color put down and have the living hell sharpened out of it to look right at that size. I then just resized it and threw it up on Pbase, so it's more drippy looking than usual.
Scott

Ok cool. That makes perfect sense then.

I wonder how many photographers don't print their work out. I imagine its a majority of modern photographers. I say, if you haven't printed any of your work you must do so.

I have shots I think look great printed, and look just ok on the monitor, and vice versa.

I just ordered a 24x36 print of one of my shots for the house, taking down 4 shots and putting up one. Its special to me and very few caught on to it (and I kinda like that).

Let me know how it comes out when/if you do the print, I'm curious.

Carl